I agree with John's comment below; I guess that is what is meant by "Business Model" - originally I was just thinking of a "business decision" - meaning that for some reason "Olbermann" at one point was a money making proposition for ESPN and now is not.
But I don't think this is a new model for ESPN. One thing we learned in the Book was that ESPN has always been afraid of its on air talent becoming the focus of viewer loyalty over the content and the brand. They felt stuck with Berman, and too controlled by Olbermann 1.0 and Patrick, and have always tried hard to not get into that situation again. I guess you could say that they let themselves get away from that with Simmons, though he was his own thing. On Thu, Jul 9, 2015 at 9:33 AM, John Edwards <[email protected]> wrote: > This has less to do with KO than an apparent change in mindset at ESPN > over the last two years, and in particular the last six months. Between > Simmons and Olbermann, it seems clear that ESPN has decided that it isn't > going to spend large money to keep big-name personalities around, > preferring instead the relatively-cheap hot-takery that populates most of > ESPN2, the generic wheel of SportsCenter suits and a band of a thousand > analysts who can bloviate on any number of ESPN-type platforms. > > One cost element is that KO's show taped in New York City, and was said to > be the only show that used the ESPN studio in Times Square (an announced > move of Mike 'n' Mike to NYC was scrubbed, leaving New York critically > short of Mikes). Vacating that studio saves ESPN money, more than just KO's > salary and whatever other production costs they had. > > Conspiracy theorists can hang their hats on the theory that the NFL > "punished" ESPN with a garbage schedule for Monday Night Football this > year, as payback for Simmons' and Olbermann's negative commentary on the > league. I'm not sure how true that is, since the MNF package has always > been the secondary one since MNF moved to ESPN and SNF went to NBC. While > it is possible that the NFL put better games on its own network than it > gave to ESPN, to try and pump up the always-dismal Thursday night package, > I'm not sure if that had anything to do with punishing ESPN or not. > > John > > -- > John Edwards > "You can insure against the weather, but you can't insure against > incompetence, can you?" - Phil Tufnell > > -- -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
